Hi I read the whole thread and I think I missed the solution to my problem.
I just got a 4K monitor and Reaper looked horribly blurry or incredibly tiny. Tried the HighDPI thing in preferences. It made it a bit better but still blurry.
Tried this HiDPI theme, looks awesome, but it's HUGE.
Is there a way to scale it down (the scaling in preference does not work as others already said) or I have to accept to work with a blurry program for 8 hours a day?

what does "bigger than 4K" mean?
4K doesn't define a size. Not even pixel density. Just pixels quantity.

He likely has big monitor with 4K pixel number. In such case 200%/retina themes doesn't help because neither 100% or 200% scale are proper for such monitor.

@Rubrik
check out this theme.https://forum.cockos.com/showthread.php?t=219391
It is designed to cover needs of big monitors users as well as retina displays.
Regardless you like it or not, you can read an article about what and why happens to Reaper in such resolutions how themes might cope with it and why most of themes cannot scale well (mentioned theme is an exception).

Also you can try development builds. While they are improvements for current major version, already contain improvements in HighDPI department to be deployed in Realer v6 I think. As I saw recently, most themes should scale properly if you disable global_scale in a theme and use DPIscale in preferences instead. Keep in mind that scaling will result in some blurrines, especially up-scaling. Also it's a bit advanced subject so you might not feel comfy at beginning .

what does "bigger than 4K" mean?
4K doesn't define a size. Not even pixel density. Just pixels quantity.

But density would describe it well. More density in QHD than FHD and even denser in 4K. Density is proportional to quantity, but with the additional information of the given quantity in space (volume).

But density would describe it well. More density in QHD than FHD and even denser in 4K. Density is proportional to quantity, but with the additional information of the given quantity in space (volume).

Density is proportional to quantity only if size is const.
4K defines nothing but number of pixels.
And if you were read previous posts, you would know the question about 4K is irrelevant.

Looks like Reaper 6 finally brings complete HiDPI support enabled by default and available in the default theme. The only thing I’m worried about so far is that the maximum supported zoom specified is 200% (the other two are 150% and 100%). So with upcoming 8K monitors, we won’t be able to use e.g. 400%, or even use 300% with existing 5K monitors.

A better implementation would contain a built-in scaling mechanism that would upscale any chosen theme to any current OS-level zoom. For example, a theme that supports 200% at maximum, could then be upscaled to any higher zoom such as 400% (with 2×2 square pixels), 600% (with 3×3 pixels), 800% (with 4×4 pixels) with integer scaling with no blur, or any non-integer-ratio one like 300% (150%=1.5 relative to 200%) or even something unusual like 188% (1.88) by downscaling from 200% using bicubic or bilinear interpolation.

A better implementation would contain a built-in scaling mechanism that would upscale any chosen theme to any current OS-level zoom. For example, a theme that supports 200% at maximum, could then be upscaled to any higher zoom such as 400% (with 2×2 square pixels), 600% (with 3×3 pixels), 800% (with 4×4 pixels) with integer scaling with no blur, or any non-integer-ratio one like 300% (150%=1.5 relative to 200%) or even something unusual like 188% (1.88) by downscaling from 200% using bicubic or bilinear interpolation.

I think we have this already. In 'Advanced UI/System Tweaks' options in the preferences menu there are more HiDPI scaling options now, as well as a global scaling option for UI elements. I'm using 5.0 default nitpicky in 4k, Win10 is scaling at 150% and Reaper is scaling with it and looks great (for the most part).

I think we have this already. In 'Advanced UI/System Tweaks' options in the preferences menu there are more HiDPI scaling options now, as well as a global scaling option for UI elements. I'm using 5.0 default nitpicky in 4k, Win10 is scaling at 150% and Reaper is scaling with it and looks great (for the most part).

I don't think that's what the other user is asking for. I believe he's asking the DEVs to allow old 5.0 themes to 'uprez' and interpolate pixels for a smoother puree. That's not the same as just doubling the pixels with a scale.

I think we have this already. In 'Advanced UI/System Tweaks' options in the preferences menu there are more HiDPI scaling options now, as well as a global scaling option for UI elements. I'm using 5.0 default nitpicky in 4k, Win10 is scaling at 150% and Reaper is scaling with it and looks great (for the most part).

That global scaling didn’t work as expected — many elements weren’t properly scaled, otherwise we wouldn’t be awaiting true HiDPI support so eagerly.

Quote:

Originally Posted by srdmusic

I don't think that's what the other user is asking for. I believe he's asking the DEVs to allow old 5.0 themes to 'uprez' and interpolate pixels for a smoother puree. That's not the same as just doubling the pixels with a scale.

At integer scaling ratios, I’m interested exactly in pixel doubling with no blur. Blur is only inevitable at fractional ratios when bilinear or bicubic interpolation is used (nearest neighbour results in distortion at fractional ratios), and such lossy blurry interpolation should only be used at fractional ratios.

My point is that Reaper should have a universal built-in scaling mechanism that would make it 100% future-proof in terms of not being limited by a specific maximum ratio such as 200% and flexible in terms of specific scaling ratios supported. And now that Reaper apparently has the infrastructure needed for true HiDPI support, such scaling is probably much more possible.

Did you try 'multimonitor aware' mode? Reaper will scale with your OS scaling settings - is that not what you were describing in your original post?

“Multimonitor aware” is exactly the HiDPI mode available and enabled by default in Reaper 6, that I told about in the first of my recent comments above. But according to official information, it is limited to three fixed zooms: 100%, 150% and 200%, while I’m talking about potential universal support for any zoom by scaling any theme to any zoom. Did you read my comment entirely and carefully?

Really? It would be news to me; those are just the three sizes I did for the V6 theme.

Would be glad to be wrong. Some first-hand clarification would be welcome.

What would Reaper 6.0 do at OS-level zoom of 300% or 400%? Would the theme be automatically scaled accordingly, or would the theme scale be limited to 200% (and therefore Reaper GUI would be 1.5x [at 300% OS-level zoom] or 2x [at 400%] smaller than should be)? Thanks.

Would be glad to be wrong. Some first-hand clarification would be welcome.

What would Reaper 6.0 do at OS-level zoom of 300% or 400%? Would the theme be automatically scaled accordingly, or would the theme scale be limited to 200% (and therefore Reaper GUI would be 1.5x [at 300% OS-level zoom] or 2x [at 400%] smaller than should be)? Thanks.

I think there is some confusion here - there is no maximum zoom specified as far as I'm aware (and White Tie has just confirmed I believe). The additional scaled-up layouts are a separate option to the new HiDPI scaling modes, and probably won't be necessary for most users with standard sized monitors now that we have both 'multimonitor aware' and 'multimonitor aware+ignore'.

If you are using multimonitor aware mode, then surely you can see the theme IS scaling with your OS scaling settings, and it's not limited to only three sizes? Is that not what you are asking about? Or you could just set your own OS scaling to 300% and check it yourself...

What would Reaper 6.0 do at OS-level zoom of 300% or 400%? Would the theme be automatically scaled accordingly, or would the theme scale be limited to 200% (and therefore Reaper GUI would be 1.5x [at 300% OS-level zoom] or 2x [at 400%] smaller than should be)? Thanks.

The V6 theme would limit you to 200%, because that's as high as I made it go. So at 400% you'd get a half size 200% theme. But if I went to the effort of doing a load of 400% images, my expectation is that would totally work fine.

Remember, this is all about removing the blurriness from autoscaled images. If you were okay with them, you could (still being 400% guy) go into the theme and tell it that 400% is a real size and then point it at the 200% images to use. That should work.

This is all brand new, so please note that I haven't actually tested all the permutations yet, but so far as a HiDPI system its pretty damn robust and future proof for a bitmap based UI.

The V6 theme would limit you to 200%, because that's as high as I made it go. So at 400% you'd get a half size 200% theme.

Thanks for the info. That’s what I suspected based on the official info and what makes Reaper not actually future-proof and not quite HiDPI-compatible. The whole HiDPI support is not just about hard-coded themes, but more about the application’s flexible rendering infrastructure.

For Reaper to be 100% HiDPI-compatible and future-proof, Reaper should be able to scale any theme automatically (with no need for user to manually edit any files with no guaranteed result) based on the data corresponding to the highest pixel density (scale, zoom) the theme supports.

So if the maximum scale a theme supports is 200%, the 200% part of the theme would be automatically upscaled with a ratio of 2.0 when OS-level zoom is 400% (400/200 = 2.0). And such scaling could be smart: either nearest-neighbour (nonblurry) or bilinear/bicubic (blurry) interpolation could be used depending on whether upscaling ratio is integer or fractional.

So for scaling a 200% theme to 300%, with a corresponding ratio of 1.5 (fractional), bilinear/bicubic interpolation would be inevitably used because 1.5×1.5 pixels are physically impossible without partially mixing sibling pixels of original image. But for scaling 200% to 400%, nearest neighbour would be used, resulting in perfect uniform square same-color 2×2 pixels. For example, that’s how Windows upscales non-DPI-aware (DPI-unaware) apps: with blur at fractional ratios like 150% (=1.5), and with no blur at integer ratios like 200% (2.0) or 300% (3.0).

TLDR: True future-proof HiDPI support (not tied to whether the theme supports a specific DPI or whether a higher-DPI theme will ever be created), would include a scaling mechanism built into Reaper itself, and that mechanism would automatically scale any theme selected by the user, according to OS-level zoom regardless of whether it is equal to one of those explicitly supported by the theme.

And do I understand correctly that HiDPI support in Reaper 6.0 (compared with 5.x) is not limited just to creating a more complete theme, but also includes some fundamental internal changes in its program logic? Do those changes include Reaper’s capability (either already available or allowing for relatively easy implementation) to autoscale themes, like I described before? Thanks.

This is actually easy to support in REAPER, and is more or less disabled by the theme itself at the moment

Good to know, thanks.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Justin

once 400% displays come around we can turn it on

300%-capable displays are already on the market for a while. Those are 27″ 5K (5120×2880) monitors (e.g. Dell UP2715K, Iiyama XB2779QQS-S1, LG 27MD5KA) and 13.3-15.6″ 4K laptops (e.g. HP EliteBook 840 G5, ASUS ZenBook 13), just not as popular due to their price. 13.3″ 4K is even equivalent to 26.6″ 8K display in terms of pixel density.

Also, this is not just about scaling the default theme. Afaict, there are multiple custom 100%-only themes that are tiny at 200%+ OS-level zooms. Yes, they can be scaled by Windows in DPI-unaware mode, but such scaling is blurry under Windows 7, and also text gets blurry/pixelated too in any Windows while could be rendered at native resolution if themes were scaled by Reaper itself.

Automatic theme scaling in Reaper is important right now. It’s also important for such scaling to be nonblurry at integer ratios (e.g. 100→200%, 200→400%). The great modern DAW deserves this.

Afaict, there are multiple custom 100%-only themes that are tiny at 200%+ OS-level zooms. Yes, they can be scaled by Windows in DPI-unaware mode, but such scaling is blurry under Windows 7, and also text gets blurry/pixelated too in any Windows while could be rendered at native resolution if themes were scaled by Reaper itself.

As it is now 100%-only themes *are* scaled by REAPER in DPI-aware mode. Such scaling is blurry, as the source images are 100%, though text is not.

As it is now 100%-only themes *are* scaled by REAPER in DPI-aware mode. Such scaling is blurry, as the source images are 100%, though text is not.

Wow, that’s much better, thanks for the info. So the only missing ingredients left for perfectly universal future-proof HiDPI support in Reaper are:

1. nonblurry scaling by pixel duplication/doubling (“Nearest Neighbour” instead of bilinear/bicubic) at integer ratios such as 2.0 (200%), 3.0 (300%), etc. while still using blurry scaling at fractional ratios such as 1.75 (175%) or 2.5 (250%);

2. OS-zoom-aware scaling for all themes regardless of whether they are 100%-only, and generate scaled versions of graphics based on the highest-resolution assets available in the theme.

Tested the built-in 100%-only themes “Default_4.0”, “Default_5.0”, “Classic_1.x”. They are indeed scaled, mainly with blur. But interestingly, some elements are already scaled with NO blur — namely the icons in the right column in the MIDI-editor window (track muting, track recording, etc.) opened via a double click on a MIDI item. So it probably gets even easier just to apply the same [already available] nonblurry scaling to other graphics in the theme as well, with no even need to implement nonblurry scaling from scratch.

Is there a way to make the volume levels over the meters in the TCP a little brighter. Also the ones in the MCP over the meters as well as the fader levels. It's very hard to see them against the dark background.

I looked in the Theme Tweaker but couldn't find anything to do this. Is there a reason it's not there.

Is there a way to make the volume levels over the meters in the TCP a little brighter. Also the ones in the MCP over the meters as well as the fader levels. It's very hard to see them against the dark background.

I looked in the Theme Tweaker but couldn't find anything to do this. Is there a reason it's not there.

Humm, this suddenly all got shifted, does that mean my question is going into oblivion.